MIK Code page

MIK is a Cyrillic code page to be used with MS-DOS. It is based on the character set used in the Bulgarian [http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=615 Pravetz 16] IBM PC compatible system.

This is the most widespread DOS/OEM code page used in Bulgaria, rather than CP855, CP866 or CP872.

Almost every DOS program created in Bulgaria, which has Bulgarian strings in it, was using MIK as encoding, and many such programs are still in use.

Code page layout

Only the upper half (128–255) of the table is shown, the lower half (0–127) being plain ASCII.

Notes for implementors of mapping tables to Unicode

Implementors of mapping tables to Unicode should note that the MIK Code page unifies some characters:

Binary character manipulations

The MIK code page maintains in alphabetical order all Cyrillic letters which enables very easy character manipulation in binary form:

10xx xxxx - is a Cyrillic Letter

100x xxxx - is an Upper-case Cyrillic Letter

101x xxxx - is a Lower-case Cyrillic Letter

In such case testing and character manipulating functions as:

IsAlpha(), IsUpper(), IsLower(), ToUpper() and ToLower(),

are bit operations and sorting is by simple comparison of character values.

External links

For more information about the origins of the characters unification have a look at [http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/IBM/readme.txt Unicode Consortium's mappings between IBM's code pages and Unicode]

Similar information about the characters unification is given in Markus Kuhn's [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#conv UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for Unix/Linux]

For more information about the range of 0xE0 to 0xFF please see the [http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/oem/437.htm Microsoft Code Page 437 reference chart]